I have been trying to beatmatch for the past couple of weeks and cant seem to figure it out. I have watched Ellaskins video on the car speeds technique by trying to increase the speed of one to match the other.
I am using on Deck A: Forrest - Masquerade and on deck B: Tom Flynn - White Drum
Are there any helpful tips or videos anyone can give me or good vinyls to start practicing with?
Do you listen to the kick drum or percussion when trying to match speeds with pitch fader?
And best way to get the hang of beatmatching is pitch down the second track your bringing in, and gradually work your way up pitch wise till you have them in sync, or start the second much faster and bring the pitch down.
But at the end of the day its just a lot of practice, stick with it though.
I prefer pitching the incoming song way up and slowing it down as needed. It’s easier to slow down the platter than increase the speed of the platter while adjusting the pitch fader at the same time.
Just keep practicing and you’ll get the hang of it eventually.
I also switch the cue to the outgoing song once the incoming song has taken priority in the actual speaker output so I can try to keep them beat matched. Not that I’ve perfected this by any means…
I enjoy playing vinyl more, I also enjoy buying vinyl a lot more.
I started off with vinyl, went to Traktor then came back to vinyl, much easier to turn up to a club with a bag of records than to set up a laptop and a load of cables.
Enjoy the black wax!! You will no doubt fiend for new records each, it will become a habit.
I found this really helpful - start always much higher and slide the pitch fader down as you keep nudging the beat back until it starts to get close. I found it really helpful as you pretty much just need to keep making same direction adjustments and then when its close, its more a quick nudge either way. If one way goes worse, nudge it the other and then adjust the pitch fader to compensate,
It’s funny. I haven’t mixed on vinyl in about 12 years now. Not because I don’t want to but because I just don’t have the space to set up two decks and a mixer. I always found when I was at home practising my beat mixing could be dreadful - I mean really bad. But when I played out, 99% of the time I was on point pretty much always. Why? other things to think about meant the basic mechanics went down to muscle memory. Once you have a grasp of the basics it gets so much easier to do. At some point it becomes automatic and you barely even think about it. Doesn’t mean you won’t screw up (I remember one gig I did - wow, it was like a lesson it how to do things wrong) but you will just get back on it and get over it.
Something else that’s funny. I’m sitting here just now listening to an old practice tape of mine from about 98/99. It’s full of really old Acid house tunes (Rez by Underworld is currently playing. Man, that takes me back..) and the mixing is fine. But when I’ve tried mixing some of these tunes in Traktor recently It’s all over the place. How strange is that? Some of them won’t even beatgrid properly they’re so old and wobbly.
Gonna get me a new mixer and rebuild my desk in the Summer. Cannot. Wait.
See, this is the great thing about it. I feel exactly the opposite. I find it much easier to slow a record down (with my finger gently on the platter) and simultaneously bringing the pitch down vs, speeding a record up - in the beginning that was much less precise for me. But to each his own.
To the OP - it’s all about figuring out what works best for you and practicing. You have to just train your ears to distinguish the different sounds in each ear and then to intuitively know which is going faster/slower, and by how much. Really, in the beginning, it’s just trial and error - you know it sounds like crap, but you don’t know which is worse, so you slow down or speed up (whatever you think it is), and if you’re right, then that helps. If it gets WAY worse then you know that you were wrong, and then proceed to speed up. By doing it over and over you just learn.
And this is exactly why when people post/say that they learned to beatmatch in 1 hour or other some such nonsense, they are savants or they are lying out of their ass. (which means that 99% of you are liars).
To be honest I was at work when I wrote that and couldn’t think whether I normally prefer slowing down or speeding up, after thinking I too prefer slowing down a record to get it matched, but I was just giving options to the OP.
It will take time to get it perfected, but worth it.
Yeah. Jacksoe12, 2 weeks, man. Two weeks is long enough to get the principle down and start to understand what you are trying to do, but not really long enough to be Derrick May . It’ll come. It’s work and it’s practice and its more work and its more practice. The important thing is that you are doing it. Seriously, You will learn SO much about the music you are playing. I think this is the main benefit from what you are trying to learn. It’ll give you a musical education you might not have got otherwise.
wow, thank you for all the replys! I tried the speeding the platter up method and it seems to be working for me might try the opposite as well just to get a feel for both. I hoping to do some gigs next year so hopefully my beatmatching will be up to a good standard by then.
Its a good learning experience and really fun to do, its just made me think that pressing a sync button is not as satisfying (or not for me anyway )
One more question, does anyone know where I can get some LED lights (not sure if thats what their called?) for my turntable cant seem to find them anywhere ?
You have to re-wire your brain to distinguish between TWO sound sources. You can’t rush that, it just happens.
BUT - that re-wiring is permanent. Once it clicks, it’s there forever. I can’t lie, it took me bloody ages. The way I finally got it, was to use split cuing in headphones with NO speakers.
You MUST persevere. It happens for everyone at a different rate, but it will happen. It’s literally like a light bulb going off in your brain. That’s not to say that one day a light bulb will go off and “hey, now I can beat match!” The light bulb will only let you know that now that you actually KNOW what you are trying to achieve and how to do it. Once that has happened, you still have to practice until you can beat match well.
Stick at it, it’s worth it.
For what it’s worth, there are literally a million bedroom DJ’s out there that can put together a well beat matched mix (using controllers and software), but that can’t actually beat match. I know that sounds like a strange statement, but a bunch of guys here will know what I mean. That may sound a little elitist, but, unfortunately, I can’t explain it any better than that.
I’m definitely better with vinyl than Traktor. maybe it’s where I’m at with learning Traktor. I feel it takes more preparation than necessary to throw tracks together. I spend 40% of my time with Traktor beat-gridding/organizing instead of actually spinning. Hopefully, this is part of the learning curve; getting a good workflow.
It definitely becomes second nature. As you get better,you find music out of sync positively insulting. Standing between two rooms playing different tempos will bug the hell out of you if doesn’t already.
You will be physically unable to resist diving into a stack of records.
It is possible your significant other’s parents have died in a devastating balloon accident and instead of consoling your better half, you’ll be face deep in the deceased person’s dusty Perry Como records.
Heres a little diagram I did ages back about riding the pitch - personally I think its the easiest way of getting stuff beatmatched for long smooth mixes without needing to touch the platter (and making things whine when you slow it down with your finger).
What isn’t really obvious in the diagram is you would be overtaking the playing record speed initially e.g
Pull forward to +5%,
then pushing back to lets say -2%,
overtaking by +3%,
push back to -1,
overtake by +1%
and back to -.5%
and forward to +.2%,
back to -.1
and forward to 0%.
Kinda like a bouncing ball losing momentum which eventually lands at a standstill.
You will eventually been able to exactly pin point track drift and correct it immediately. You’ll also find your attention to detail whilst DJing increases significantly whether vinyl, cd or digital. Plenty of good reasons to learn to beatmatch with vinyl, which have all been mentioned.
But also wanted to impart a tip (I think I’ve posted this before): assumes the TT is a Technics and the track you want to speed up is playing at 33, then press and hold the 33 button and at the same briefly tap the 45 button, which will give that track a cheeky little speed increase - don’t forget to then tweak the pitch accordingly. It also minimises audible interference.
That may sound a little elitist, but, unfortunately, I can’t explain it any better than that.